They have made two animated Hellboy movies, But why no animated series?, The live action movies were popular but no cartoon had the chance to happen?.
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They have made two animated Hellboy movies, But why no animated series?, The live action movies were popular but no cartoon had the chance to happen?.
If done in an appropriate style and genre (no kiddy-style Hellboy stories), this would be the easiest way to deliver continuous stories with no limitations of actor age or extensive CGI to achieve the accompanying characters and surroundings.
I had always assumed that the dvds unfortunately didn't sell enough and so no one committed to a series. i would have loved it though.
[QUOTE=kingmyth;2577083]They have made two animated Hellboy movies, But why no animated series?, The live action movies were popular but no cartoon had the chance to happen?.[/QUOTE]
For questions such as these it is mighty unfortunate this forum was wiped clean in 2014 due to and along with the rest of the CBR website.
Since one of the main execs and aggregates to Hellboy Animated (as well as the Disney Darkwing Duck creator I believe) was a long time Hellboy forum frequenter and mr Mike afficianado.
Your post pretty much reflects reality however - as far as I know - in that outside of the two animated features no further developing [I]has had the chance[/I] to happen.
Why? I believe when Mike Mignola was asked this some six years ago his reply amounted to (in my own words) how in the wake of the (Universal, live action) movies, the rights to both HellboyAnimated DVDs as well as the Amazing Screw-On Head DVD feature have been bought up by a company (Starz Inc.?), which now or eversince attaining those rights decided to seek no further development whatsoever.
So the ghist of it seems that indeed no cartoon has or has had the chance to happen.
Personally I can enjoy all 'we' did get (with or without a 3d movie or any animated whatevers), as the actual 'Mignola-Verse' comics appear pretty much unbeatable as they are anyway, so I count my blessings all the same.
[QUOTE=Kees_L;2583396]For questions such as these it is mighty unfortunate this forum was wiped clean in 2014 due to and along with the rest of the CBR website.
Since one of the main execs and aggregates to Hellboy Animated (as well as the Disney Darkwing Duck creator I believe) was a long time Hellboy forum frequenter and mr Mike afficianado.
Your post pretty much reflects reality however - as far as I know - in that outside of the two animated features no further developing [I]has had the chance[/I] to happen.
Why? I believe when Mike Mignola was asked this some six years ago his reply amounted to (in my own words) how in the wake of the (Universal, live action) movies, the rights to both HellboyAnimated DVDs as well as the Amazing Screw-On Head DVD feature have been bought up by a company (Starz Inc.?), which now or eversince attaining those rights decided to seek no further development whatsoever.
So the ghist of it seems that indeed no cartoon has or has had the chance to happen.
Personally I can enjoy all 'we' did get (with or without a 3d movie or any animated whatevers), as the actual 'Mignola-Verse' comics appear pretty much unbeatable as they are anyway, so I count my blessings all the same.[/QUOTE]
Very educational post. I had assumed Dark Horse Entertainment owned the movie rights (live and animated). But after reading your post, I did some quick research.
[URL="http://enewsi.com/animation/194-8313.html"]IDT Entertainment Licenses Animation Rights To Hellboy (2005)[/URL]
[QUOTE]IDT Entertainment announced today that it has licensed all animation rights to the Hellboy property from Revolution Studios. IDT Entertainment, in partnership with Revolution Studios, plans to develop animated content for television and home entertainment as well as a full range of integrated marketing applications across all categories. Production will utilize IDT Entertainment's animation studios in Los Angeles. IDT Entertainment Sales will handle worldwide sales and Anchor Bay Entertainment, an IDT Entertainment company, will distribute DVD/video product. IDT Entertainment is a subsidiary of IDT Corporation (NYSE: IDT, IDT.C), an international telecom, entertainment, and technology company. [/QUOTE]
This led to the first two animated movies.
[QUOTE]The first two 75-minute animated movies, Sword of Storms and Blood and Iron, were aired on Cartoon Network before being released on DVD. The first one aired October 28, 2006, and the second aired March 17, 2007.[/QUOTE]
There was a third movie in the works. But then it ended up not being released.
[QUOTE]A third animated Hellboy film, The Phantom Claw, has been put on hold. Tad Stones, director and writer of the direct-to-video movies, says the film will star Lobster Johnson and will have some familiar characters, but Abe and Liz will not be in the film (at least not as main characters).[/QUOTE]
And I bet this third one must be really good. 83% of 628 viewers voted on Rotten Tomatoes they liked it. ;)
[URL="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hellboy-animated-the-phantom-claw/"]Hellboy Animated: The Phantom Claw[/URL]
If they did something as good as say, Batman:TAS or Samurai Jack, I'd love it. However, they didn't. Those two animated movies were fine, I recall, but they weren't amazing.
I have the comics, so I don't really need a cartoon to reiterate those stories. It's not like Batman where the mythology is so flexible. I don't know that we need to muddy the waters of who and what Hellboy is any further.
[QUOTE=Joker;2583870]If they did something as good as say, Batman:TAS or Samurai Jack, I'd love it. However, they didn't. Those two animated movies were fine, I recall, but they weren't amazing.
I have the comics, so I don't really need a cartoon to reiterate those stories. It's not like Batman where the mythology is so flexible. I don't know that we need to muddy the waters of who and what Hellboy is any further.[/QUOTE]
I think that before the first Hellboy movie, not too many people remotely deemed such a thing possible for Hellboy.
Even after a first full decade of Hellboy running pretty darned consistently both as even expansively, it seemed to me that many fans old or new would in some way be estimating Hellboy 'nichey' or too removed from ordinary mainstream comics to ever 'take off' (whatever that could really mean).
I think that both the live action movies and the cartoons mainly sprung up as made by industry professionals expecting little since they'd know how such industry operates.
I think once the live action movie was actually materializing, with Del Toro at the helm - who could be seen as not your average Hollywood household name at the time - which probably made him such a good fit for the story matter, since Hellboy allowed him to make an American comic blockbuster-type-of movie without too much people worried about him screwing it up or making it too weird which they would had it been a Batman or Spider-Man thing, once that first movie started becoming reality, it opened the door for the animated features.
And I think the live action movie both as the animated feature films were made so as to reach as many fans in or outside of comics as possible, delivering quality but most of all accessible titles. What people might normally not be reading the Hellboy comics might do once they'd know 'an actual movie' had been made based on them.
Hellboy's unique and quite personal manner of design both as storytelling in the comics seems to have sparked formostly more broad and somewhat 'normalized' adaptations, not necessarily because Mignola's style would be but abnormal, but full-on personalized and precise is what the comics seem like already, so any different formats adding to such by trying to be speaking the exact same kind of language would only become uncomfortable I'd imagine.
To me it seems both the live action and the animated movies strife to not be muddying any waters by means of being more middle-of-the-road than the comics, for accomplishing accesibility, plus I personally believe they each from the get-go will have been requested and meant to firmly be remaining 'things of themselves' as much as they could - in order to be adaptations more rather than just different versions of the same thing.
And should any of this thinking of mine be to hold up in the slightest, I'd be inclined to think that each of these films will have accomplished as much as they could have done, as well as they could have, pretty much. But this is obviously all just personal conjecture of my own basically.
[QUOTE=Joker;2583870]If they did something as good as say, Batman:TAS or Samurai Jack, I'd love it. However, they didn't. Those two animated movies were fine, I recall, but they weren't amazing.
I have the comics, so I don't really need a cartoon to reiterate those stories. It's not like Batman where the mythology is so flexible. I don't know that we need to muddy the waters of who and what Hellboy is any further.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I think studios shouldn't treat a creator-owned character the same way you can treat a company-owned character.
Also, I seem to recall Mike saying something about [I]Hellboy[/I] being difficult to sell as a property to certain demographics because of the word Hell being in the title.
Oh sure, I don't really see a Hellboy cartoon coming on after school, you know?
I could see it on Adult Swim. I could see it animated in a cross between Samurai Jack and Batman: TAS hitting a great Mignola vibe. But, this only works if it's in the right hands. Hands that understand what makes Mignola's comics work, and how to cross that over into animation. Which would be very hard. Mike, to me, uses the "it's what happens between the panels" methodology for comics, and that's not exactly geared toward a fully animated cartoon.
It'd take the proverbial "lighting in a bottle" to pull it off properly.
It is a good point about how 'Hellboy' causing a stumbling block in the animated audience this is being designed for. Though any red-blooded, wise comic book reader would have at least a few Hellboy books in their collection.
:p
But if you look at the Spawn animated series that was created back in the 90's, if that was possible and matching the art style of McFarlane, the same could work for a Mignola-based universe.
[QUOTE=Killercroc357;2583535] . . . There was a third movie in the works. But then it ended up not being released.
[quote]A third animated Hellboy film, The Phantom Claw, has been put on hold. Tad Stones, director and writer of the direct-to-video movies, says the film will star Lobster Johnson and will have some familiar characters, but Abe and Liz will not be in the film (at least not as main characters). [/quote]
And I bet this third one must be really good. 83% of 628 viewers voted on Rotten Tomatoes they liked it. ;)
[URL="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hellboy-animated-the-phantom-claw/"]Hellboy Animated: The Phantom Claw[/URL][/QUOTE]If it wasn't released, how were people able to rate it? :confused:
By the way, I've seen a DVD of the first two Hellboy animated movies on sale for $5.00 recently in Walmart.
(Have been debating about buying it.)
Hopefully with the new movie there is renewed interested in Hellboy outside comics. That could lead to other properties such as video-games and an animated series popping up.
Streaming services such as Netflix/Amazon would be a better home for an adult-leaning Hellboy series. It's doesn't have to be an adults-only take but it should definitely skew older than your average Saturday morning cartoon.:cool:
I don't mind it focusing on new stories with the Hellboy cast mixed in with a few adaptations of existing stories.
[QUOTE=the illustrious mr. kenway;4282618] . . . Streaming services such as Netflix/Amazon would be a better home for an adult-leaning Hellboy series. It's doesn't have to be an adults-only take but it should definitely skew older than [B]your average Saturday morning cartoon[/B].:cool: [/QUOTE]What's a "[FONT=Comic Sans MS][B][COLOR="#0000FF"]Saturday morning cartoon[/COLOR][/B][/FONT]"? :confused: :p [SIZE=1]
(Have there been any in this century? Or maybe just on cable TV stations?)[/SIZE]
[QUOTE=MajorHoy;4282693]What's a "[FONT=Comic Sans MS][B][COLOR="#0000FF"]Saturday morning cartoon[/COLOR][/B][/FONT]"? :confused: :p [SIZE=1]
(Have there been any in this century? Or maybe just on cable TV stations?)[/SIZE][/QUOTE]
Oh now, [B]Major[/B]!!
Your age is showing!!
Mine Too!!:cool: